A Trip to The Younger Me

The first time I tried to leave my own life, I didn’t pack a suitcase.

I packed silence.

It was the kind of silence that sits on your chest and calls itself “rest,” the kind that whispers, You’re tired because you’re failing. The kind that makes even the softest morning feel like a verdict.

I remember standing in my kitchen with a glass of water I couldn’t finish, staring at my reflection in the dark microwave door like it might offer a refund.

Behind the glass: a grown version of me with careful manners and messy thoughts.

Inside my head: a crowded room of old voices.

Not enough.

Too much.

You should’ve known.

You should’ve been different.

And then, without any magic or lightning or obvious cinematic cue, I did something I hadn’t done in years.

I told the truth.

Out loud, to nobody.

“I don’t want to feel like this anymore.”

My voice cracked the way ice does—quiet, then sudden. And in that small sound, something shifted. Not healed. Not solved.

But shifted.

Like a door that had been stuck finally giving a millimeter.

I went to my bedroom, opened the drawer where I keep receipts I’ll never return, and found an old notebook from a life I barely admit belonged to me.

The cover was bent, the pages soft with time. When I opened it, a dried leaf fell out—pressed there by a younger hand that believed small things could be saved.

The first page had my handwriting at sixteen. Too neat. Too desperate to be liked by the world.

If I ever become older and forget—please come back for me.

I stared at that sentence until my vision blurred.

Then I sat down on the edge of the bed, notebook in my lap like a passport.

And I took the trip.

Not the kind with boarding passes.

The kind with breathing.

The kind with bravery.

________________________________________

The Station of Then

In my mind, the past looked like a train station.

Not the romantic kind from movies—no sweeping orchestras, no wistful slow motion. More like fluorescent lights and sticky floors and a schedule that never loved anyone back.

I was there, older, carrying invisible luggage: the things I never said, the things I said too harshly, the things I swallowed until they learned to bite.

A speaker crackled overhead, and in that scratchy announcement I heard my own inner narrator:

Now arriving: Everything You Avoided.

I walked along the platform and saw them.

My younger self sat on a bench, knees pulled to chest, hood up like it could hide a whole universe of hurting. They were thinner than I remembered. Not just in body—in certainty.

They were wearing that particular expression I know too well: the face of someone trying to look normal while their thoughts practice disappearing.

I approached slowly, the way you approach a skittish animal or an old wound.

They looked up.

And my heart did something so human it embarrassed me.

It recognized itself.

“You’re late,” they said, voice flat.

It wasn’t anger. It was proof. Proof that they’d been waiting.

“I know,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”

They shrugged like it didn’t matter, but their eyes did not shrug. Their eyes were honest and tired.

For a moment, neither of us spoke.

Between us sat all the years.

All the almosts.

All the what if I had…

Then they asked the question I’d been ducking my entire adulthood:

“Does it get better?”

I wanted to lie. I wanted to hand them a shiny, guaranteed ending wrapped in a bow.

But younger me deserved more than a marketing slogan.

So I told the truth in a way that wouldn’t crush them.

“It gets… real,” I said. “And then it gets better.”

They frowned. “That doesn’t sound comforting.”

“It’s not,” I admitted. “But it’s livable. And you—” I swallowed. “You become someone who survives your own mind.”

They stared at the ground like the floor might translate my words into something safer.

“Life feels like a test I didn’t study for,” they said. “I keep failing and failing and smiling anyway.”

I sat beside them, close enough to share warmth, not close enough to steal breath.

“I know,” I said.

And because my mouth didn’t know how to say it simply, the words came out like a rhyme that had been waiting in my ribs:

Hard days, harsh ways,

small storms in crowded hallways.

You wear your hurt like hidden art,

a quiet ache inside your heart.

Younger me blinked. “Why are you talking like that?”

I almost laughed. Almost. But my laughter is careful around grief.

“Because pain repeats,” I said. “And sometimes rhyme is the only way to hold it without breaking.”

________________________________________

Love, Like a Lesson You Didn’t Ask For

We walked from the bench to the edge of the platform where the tracks disappeared into shadow.

Younger me nudged a pebble with their shoe.

“I think love is a trick,” they said. “Like… people say it’s the answer, but it feels like the thing that ruins you.”

I remembered.

The first time I trusted someone who didn’t know how to be gentle.

The way I mistook intensity for intimacy.

The way I turned my own needs into an apology.

“I thought love was supposed to fix me,” I told them. “So when it hurt, I assumed it was my fault for being unfixable.”

They winced, like the sentence touched a bruise.

“Is it always like that?” they asked. “Do we always choose people who make us feel small?”

“No,” I said, and this time I let the certainty land. “Not always. But we do at first. We confuse familiar with safe.”

Younger me crossed their arms. “So what happens?”

“We learn,” I said. “Slowly. Stubbornly.”

I could see the scenes flicker behind their eyes—the crushes, the rejections, the way they practiced being easy to love.

So I gave them what I wish someone had given me:

Permission.

“Love isn’t supposed to be a cage,” I said. “If it costs you your voice, it isn’t love—it’s rent you can’t afford.”

They looked at me like they didn’t believe adults could say things like that without laughing.

Then, softer: “Do we ever get loved the right way?”

I nodded. “Yes. And before that… we learn to love ourselves in the ways nobody taught us.”

The rhyme returned, gentle as a hand on a shoulder:

Don’t beg for crumbs when you need a meal,

don’t call it love if it isn’t real.

Your heart’s not a hotel for passing pain,

it’s a home—don’t flood it with the rain.

Younger me pressed their lips together like they were trying not to cry in public.

I understood.

Crying feels illegal when you’ve been trained to be “strong.”

________________________________________

Family, the First Mirror

We sat again, and the station around us hummed with the noise of old memories: a slammed door, a forced laugh, the way “We’re fine” can sound like a threat.

Younger me asked, “Do they ever… see us?”

There it was.

The need that lived under everything.

To be known without performing.

To be held without earning it.

To be defended without having to prove you deserved defense.

I exhaled carefully.

“Sometimes,” I said. “Some of them do. Some of them can’t. Some of them won’t.”

Younger me’s jaw tightened. “So we’re just… stuck with it?”

“No,” I said. “We’re not stuck. But we are shaped. And we get to decide what we keep.”

They looked skeptical. “How do you decide?”

I tapped my chest. “By listening to the part of you that goes quiet around certain people. The part that shrinks. The part that starts explaining itself too much.”

Younger me laughed once, bitter and tiny. “That part is always quiet.”

I swallowed. I felt my own adulthood rise up like a defense attorney: You had reasons. You were coping. You were doing your best.

But my younger self didn’t need my excuses.

They needed my presence.

So I said, “I know. You learned to be small so nobody would get angry. You learned to be useful so nobody would leave.”

Their eyes filled. They blinked fast, like they could out-run tears.

Then I offered the truth that changed me later than it should have:

“Family can be where you start,” I said. “But it isn’t always where you finish.”

A pause.

“Is that allowed?” they asked.

“It has to be,” I said. “Otherwise the cycle keeps cycling.”

And the rhyme, like a candle in a hallway:

Blood can be loud, but it can’t be law,

you don’t owe your peace to what you saw.

You can forgive and still depart,

you can leave with an open heart.

________________________________________

Wealth, and the Hunger That Isn’t Money

Younger me pulled their sleeves over their hands. “What about money?”

The question sounded ashamed, the way it does when you’ve been taught that wanting stability is greed.

I nodded because I remembered the panic of counting coins in your head while pretending you’re listening.

“The fear doesn’t start with money,” I said. “Money just becomes the language the fear speaks.”

Younger me frowned. “What does that mean?”

“It means you think wealth will finally make you safe,” I said. “So you chase it like oxygen. And when you don’t have it, you feel like you don’t deserve air.”

They stared at the tracks again, eyes distant.

“I’m tired of being scared,” they whispered. “I’m tired of watching other people live like it’s easy.”

I leaned in, not to preach, but to confess.

“I learned something,” I said. “Wealth can buy comfort, yes. It can buy time, sometimes. But it can’t buy worth.”

Younger me scoffed. “Worth doesn’t pay bills.”

“No,” I agreed. “But worth keeps you from selling yourself to pay them.”

Their mouth opened, then closed. The idea was new. Dangerous. Delicious.

I continued, “You can pursue abundance without turning yourself into a machine. You can want more without calling your current self ‘not enough.’”

And quietly, like a promise:

Chase your dreams, not your despair,

stack your savings, keep your care.

Gold is cold when you’re alone,

build your life, not just a throne.

________________________________________

The Bad Thoughts (and the Truth About Them)

We were quiet for a long time.

In that quiet, I could hear the real reason I’d come back.

Not love. Not family. Not money.

The thoughts.

The ones that slither in at night and act like they pay rent.

The ones that say, You are a burden. You are behind. You are broken. The world would be lighter without you in it.

I could feel younger me thinking them even now, like a radio playing in the background of their breathing.

So I said it plainly, because secrecy is where those thoughts grow teeth.

“I know you’ve thought about disappearing,” I told them.

Their body went rigid.

They didn’t look at me. “Don’t,” they said.

“I’m not here to punish you,” I said gently. “I’m here to stop you from punishing yourself.”

They swallowed hard. “You don’t understand.”

“I do,” I said, and my voice shook. “I understand so much that I’m still alive out of pure stubbornness some days.”

They turned to me, eyes wide and wet. “So… we don’t—?”

I reached for their hand, slow, asking without words. They let me hold it.

“No,” I said. “We don’t. We stay.”

Not because life becomes perfect.

Not because pain stops showing up.

But because we learn a new skill: letting pain visit without letting it move in.

“Those thoughts,” I said, “are alarms. Not prophecies.”

They breathed, shaky.

“And when they come,” I continued, “we tell someone. We write it down. We go outside. We drink water. We sleep. We get help. We stop treating our darkest moments like private homework.”

Younger me stared at our joined hands like they couldn’t believe anyone would hold them through this.

The rhyme came back, not as poetry, but as a rope:

Bad thoughts talk—let them pass,

they are weather, not your class.

You are not the storm you feel,

you are the wound that learns to heal.

________________________________________

The Departure Gate

A train arrived with a sigh, doors opening like a second chance.

A sign above it read: NOW BOARDING: NEXT VERSION OF YOU.

Younger me stood, suddenly nervous.

“I don’t want to go,” they admitted. “What if I mess it up?”

I smiled, a real one—tired but true.

“Oh, you’ll mess it up,” I said. “Magnificently, sometimes.”

They made a sound between a laugh and a sob.

“But you’ll also make it through,” I added. “And you’ll become someone you’d protect.”

Younger me hesitated, then asked the question that punched straight through my ribs:

“Do we ever stop feeling like we’re too much?”

I thought about all the times I tried to be smaller so I could be easier to hold.

Then I answered like a person who has finally learned the difference between love and tolerance.

“Yes,” I said. “We stop asking permission to exist.”

They nodded slowly, as if committing that sentence to memory.

Before they stepped toward the train, they looked back at me.

“Will you forget me again?” they asked.

My throat tightened.

“No,” I promised. “I’m done abandoning us.”

And because some promises need rhythm to stick, I said it the way my heart said it:

Scars are stars that learned to stay,

proof you lived through every day.

You’re not weak for what you feel—

you’re still here, and that is real.

They climbed onto the train.

At the door, they turned one last time, eyes bright with a fragile kind of hope.

“Tell me one thing,” they said. “One thing I can hold onto.”

I didn’t reach for inspiration.

I reached for honesty.

“You don’t have to earn your right to be alive,” I said. “You already belong here.”

The doors closed.

The train moved.

And for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel like my past was chasing me.

It felt like it was waving.

________________________________________

Back in the Kitchen

I blinked, and I was back on my bed with the notebook open in my lap.

My room was the same. My problems were still waiting in their usual corners. My phone still had notifications. My bank account still had opinions.

Nothing had magically vanished.

But something had unclenched.

I went back to the kitchen and drank the water. All of it. Like a small act of loyalty.

Then I picked up a pen and wrote beneath that old sentence—beneath the younger me’s plea:

I came back. I’m here. We’re going to keep going.

Outside, the world continued doing what it does: cars passing, people living, time being rude and relentless.

Inside, something new settled in me—not happiness, not perfection.

Resilience.

The kind that doesn’t roar.

The kind that simply refuses to disappear.

And as I turned off the light, a final rhyme, soft as a promise, followed me into tomorrow:

Move on, not by losing your pain,

but by choosing your name.

You are more than what you’ve been through—

you are the one who carried you.

________________________________________

Author’s Note

This is for the ones who’ve cried in showers,

For the hearts still bruised from fallen towers.

You are not the weight you carry.

You are the dawn—still vast, still fiery.